Adventures with Hubert

Hubert (the car) and I went on a errand run today. Fantastically productive. Fun places too!
I packed the car with boxes and bubbles at Carton Services and then wound around town picking up silver wire from West Coast Findings (for making earring wires, I seem to now require an endless supply of earwires) and I bought a new wire cutter... its a sweet little number... gotta love good tools.

Then I went to Hippo Hardware and checked out the chandelier parts they had on hand. WOW that was fun. I've never been to this place before and it was terrific, totally packed with nick-nacks. The top floor was all lamps and parts of lamps. There was an entire wall of drawers that are filled with chandelier parts, organized drawers of crystals prisms and metal widgets. Oh yeah baby. I've been wanting to find old crystal prisms to make more rainbow making mobiles (like this one) and this place was perfect. They have new ones and used ones. I picked out a handful of different size used ones and one ball prism for myself because I love them! it was new, they didn't have any used ballz :) oh my.
Okay, so Hippo Hardware was a very fun place. I also hit up SunLan Lighting for some more photoflood bulbs, mine seem to have all blown within the last few weeks. That place is also very fun (big store full of nothing but lightbulbs?! whats not fun about that)
Oh here are more pictures of Hippo Hardware, although I also ran around to Harbor Freight, and the Marine Fishing Store (swivel source) and then up to the glass studio to pick up some of my work...

The picture above is a staircase that was lined with doorplates and keyholes of all types and sizes... and then the picture below is a manikin dressed as a nun (in flippers) G pimpin' in a bath tub. Yep. I'll say it again, I enjoyed visiting Hippo Hardware, and I walked away with a bunch of neat old prisms for about a buck a piece.

Handwriting Experiment Day 2

Handwriting

Okay, so I think the format still needs some work... its pretty illegible... but I still like the idea... what do you think?

.

Scrap Bucket

Its hard to see in the pictures (which I made a little animation out of), however I was cutting circles for 3+hours, so I made quite a bit of scrap...

Ode to Garden Mobile

I feel like summer is rounding out... kids are going back to school... my tomatoes are all ripening getting eaten, my beans are almost done for the season. Its been so hot that a lot of my flowers are sorta tortured by now... soon I'll have to start planting more bulbs for next spring (I forgot to do that last year- so I've got a big box of bulbs I've got to plant this year - when is the right time?)

Jan and I have created a flower mobile that I had to share here on my blog.

The colors are reflective and shiny, the mobile is a garden of many different flowers that Jan has carved over the years. We've done a garden mobile before (which is exquisite!) but this is the first time we've printed the flowers in colors (the other garden mobile is monochromatic)

I like how the red pops, and I colored the stems of the flowers green. I was inspired by the Orchid plate that we made recently.

In these last two pictures I tried to capture how the color is vibrant and metallic.

Silliness Brings Smiles

A wonderful email came to me today, I love getting pictures from customers and these two really made me smile! This is what the email said:

Dear Leah,
Thought you might get a kick out of these. The girls that clean for me always leave her like this:
and my granson always puts her - -- second pic to follow

There is it, the iPhone pictures bringing us all closer :) Thank You Susan!!!

I love both pictures, the first one cracks me up - I have seen people set down my little downward facing dogs like this, so that they are seated (and sort of looking like they are on a strange roller coaster) rather than doing yoga... seems to me its some sort of funny reaction to seeing the lady with her ass up in the air, some people feel the need to let her just sit down. I find this really funny.

And the second picture is just divine, the little person sitting on the little swan. What fun!

I'm so close I can taste it!!

I just want to send a big Thank you all around the world to all my Etsy customers. Its been wonderful to share my work with you all. I hope you have enjoyed your colorful packages, your speedy shipping, and most importantly I hope your mobiles exceeded your expectations!

Here's to triple digits. I had a goal of reaching 1000 sales last Christmas. Seemed like such a small number and such a do-able achievement. Life is full of disappointments. Right!? :) Some disappointments are more delicious than others - and I dare say the patience required to see my Etsy shop reach triple digits has been quite tasty. I have loved each and every one of my 999 Etsy sales (okay so there was one that was a PITA but that is rude of me to mention and honestly, 1/999 ain't bad!) and I really don't mind it took me 2+years!

So heres the deal: (I am only announcing it here, and most likely my next Etsy customer might not see this...) regardless, whoever is my 1000th sale on Etsy gets a sweet reward in their package :)

Gratitude sometimes comes in the form of colored glass goodies :)

PS. notice in the picture above that my shop looks so spiffy?! if you go into my shop on your computer it doesn't look like this (yet) because also notice in the upper left corner of the picture is the words "rearrange your shop"... Well I have been taste-testing this new feature and its bitter-sweet! Its a brilliant feature but only the other beta testers can see my changes. arg! so until the Etsy releases this feature my customers can't see my rearranging. *sigh* doesn't it look good?! hm... I guess its hard to tell from just one screen shot... so for now you'll just have to trust me! ha!